all the right things (for all the wrong reasons)
by Lucius Malloy
Summary: You should have known it would come to this. You and her, you've done all the right things for all the wrong reasons, so it makes sense that you end up just blurting it out like this. "Because I fucking love you, okay?" She stares at you.


You should have known it would come to this. You and her, you've done all the right things for all the wrong reasons, so it makes sense that you end up just blurting it out like this.

"Because I fucking love you, okay?"

She stares at you.

It started with a kiss. It's been months, but you can remember it clearly.

All of the Gryffindor sixth-years were playing spin the bottle in the common room on the last night before half of you went home for Christmas. It was one of the rare times all nine of you were together – usually someone was always off studying, or in a corner entwined with someone else. But by around midnight everyone had drifted in from their individual exploits and gathered around the small table by the fire.

Not surprisingly, it was you and Sirius who started the whole endeavour. Not planning on going home, you decided to start the party early. And then there was an empty bottle of Butterbeer, and someone spun it, and so it goes.

She was the last one to join you.

"Evans!" Sirius exclaimed. You tried to look like you hadn't been waiting for this moment for the past two hours, and she tried not to look at you. "Come join us," Sirius continued, patting the space between you and him. "There's room here, come on. James can move over a bit."

"Two seconds," Lily said with a smile. "Let me just go put this away." She held up her bag, which you could only assume was full of textbooks. You were half expecting that she wouldn't come back, but she did. In addition to dumping her bag, she had tied her hair up and changed from her school skirt to a worn pair of Muggle jeans. You tried not to stare.

She sat down between you and Sirius as instructed, and Sirius handed her a full bottle. "What are we playing?"

"Pretty standard spin the bottle," he answered, gesturing at the empty bottle on the table. "Whoever the bottle lands on picks truth or dare, whoever spun the bottle picks the truth or the dare. Drinking of your own free will, not attached to rules." He took a swig from the bottle of Firewhisky he was holding to illustrate this point. Lily followed suit.

"I think it's my turn," Sirius said, reaching for the empty bottle. He gave it a vigorous spin, and it seemed to keep turning for at least a full minute… until it finally landed, unmistakeably, on Lily.

"Well, well," Sirius smirked, "beginners luck, it seems. Truth or dare, Evans?"

"Dare," she said without a second thought, earning quite a few raised eyebrows from the array of teenagers around the table.

"Whoa, Evans!" Sirius laughed. "Okay, I dare you to snog Prongs."

Your heart dropped into your stomach, and you shot Sirius a look. "How old are you, Padfoot?"

But Lily turned to you with a sort of half-hearted shrug. "Hey, a dare's a dare, right?"

"Come on, then, Evans," you said, making an effort to sound like your usual self and not like you were about to experience the very thing you'd been dreaming about for months.

She leaned in towards your ear. "No one will believe you if you tell them about this."

You had no time to process what she meant before her lips were on yours, her hands were in your hair, and you couldn't breathe because it was the best kiss of your life and you were barely participating.

She leaned back with a smug smile. "Alright there, Potter?"

"Shut up, Evans," you muttered. A titter runs through the other students.

You don't remember much else from that night.

For months after that, you pretended you didn't see the looks she shot at you when she thought you weren't looking. You went along with her increasingly bold flirting, all the while complaining to Sirius about how incredibly confusing it all was.

Until the next time alcohol was involved.

Fittingly enough, it was the last night before the summer holiday. There was no spin the bottle to be found this time, but everyone fourth-year and above was gathered in the common room, with music playing and alcohol flowing freely.

She came up to you when the party had been going on for a few hours, clutching a cup of what looked suspiciously like the punch Sirius had made by combining all the alcohol you had found left in your dormitory.

"Hey, Potter," she said, sipping the drink and grimacing. It was definitely Sirius's punch.

"Evans! Not a fan of the punch, I take it?"

"Is that what this is?" She wrinkled her nose.

"It's what Sirius is calling it. He realised we had to get rid of all the alcohol in the dorm before tomorrow, so what better way to do that than to mix it all together?"

"Some logic," Lily snorted.

"Well, that's Sirius for you."

You talked for what seemed like hours but was probably not all that long since people started drifting off soon after she walked up to you and Gryffindor parties tended to disintegrate pretty quickly once they started unravelling. Pretty soon only you and she were left in the common room, passing back and forth the bottle of Firewhisky you had found moments before she had found you. Both of you were significantly more inebriated than you had been at the beginning of the conversation, but neither of you minded much.

"Let's play Never Have I Ever," she declared suddenly.

"There's only two of us, Evans," you pointed out.

"So? I'll say a thing and you'll drink if you've done it, then you'll say a thing. Easy, no?"

"It does sound easy," you agreed. "Wait, though, are we saying things we've done or things we haven't done?"

"It's more interesting if we say things we've done, don't you think?"

"Oh, definitely. It doesn't make sense, though, if we're saying never have I–"

"I don't care," she cut you off. "Okay. Never have I ever fantasised about a Hogwarts teacher," she said with a grin. Before you could even ask, she continued, "Remember that Defence sub we had last year? My oh my."

You grabbed the bottle from her, but didn't take a drink. You could see the mirth in her eyes. She knew she had shocked you.

"Never have I ever kissed a girl," you shot back, not caring that it was a fairly cop-out question. She wrapped her fingers around yours on the bottle and lifted it to her lips.

"I never kiss and tell," she said with a wink. "Let's establish a few baselines here. Never have I ever had sex."

You raised your eyebrows and grabbed the bottle. "Please. I'm James Potter."

She elbowed you in the ribs.

You continued on in this vein for a while, testing each other's limits, until she looked you directly in the eyes and said "Never have I ever replayed our spin the bottle kiss over and over in my head."

You didn't break eye contact as you raised the bottle to your lips and drained what little remained in it.

You still don't know whether she kissed you or you kissed her, but what happened in December was nothing compared to what was happening then.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you were going through your memories of the past ten minutes to make sure the common room was empty, but most of your consciousness was preoccupied with the fact that Lily Evans was kissing you, and it wasn't a dare. And unlike the time it was a dare, you had the presence of mind to kiss her back.

The empty bottle of Firewhisky fell away as you wrapped your arms around her. One of her hands was fisting in your hair, and the other tugged your shirt out of your pants and crept underneath it. You unravelled her loose braid. She was still wearing her button-up school shirt, and you undid the buttons as carefully as your drunk fingers could manage. You didn't remove her Gryffindor tie, and neither did she.

She pulled your shirt off in one fluid motion. She pushed you down on the sofa you were sitting on, until you were flat on your back and she was straddling you. Your eyes widened, but you took her face in your hands and guided her lips back to yours. She kissed you with a new intensity, and you reached around to unhook her bra.

Had you not been drunk, you may have paid more attention to the fact that you and Lily Evans were both shirtless on a couch in the Gryffindor common room. As it was, she was the only thing you were aware of. Quickly, before she could protest, you switched places with her. You were now lying on top of her, staring down into the face you'd been dreaming of since fourth year. You could feel yourself pressing against her all the way down your body.

You leaned down to kiss her nipples, and she sighed. Taking your time, you trailed the kisses down her ribs, until you reached the waistband of her school skirt.

"You know, I have a thing for girls in uniform," you practically growled.

"Is that so," she breathed. "Good thing I happened to wear mine to the party, no?"

You responded by unzipping the skirt and slowly pulling it off her, revealing a lack of underwear. The only thing she was wearing now was her school tie, haphazardly thrown over one shoulder. "You're going to kill me, you know that?" you told her between kisses on the insides of her knees. "So I think it's only fair…" you trailed kisses slowly up the insides of her thighs, "that I exact revenge on you."

Slowly, you kissed a trail from one thigh to her navel and down to the other thigh. She made a noise tht sounded like "please" and tried to reach between her legs with her hands. You took her hands, resting them on the outsides of her thighs. Trying to prolong the moment as long as possible, you leaned in and slowly licked your way up her folds. She bucked her hips to meet you but you took your time, eliciting pleading noises.

By then you were very aware of the fact that you were still wearing your trousers, and there was a very uncomfortable bulge in them. When you were sure Lily was close to reaching breaking point, you raised your gaze to meet her eyes. "Patience, Evans."

She was anything but patient. In one quick manoeuvre, she had you pinned beneath her once again. Her Gryffindor tie hanging directly between her breasts, she shimmied your trousers and boxers off, never once breaking eye contact. Before you knew it, she was lowering herself down on you, and suddenly you were where you never expected to be: balls deep in Lily Evans on a sofa in the Gryffindor common room.

It didn't take long after that. You took comfort, however, in the fact that you made damned sure she reached the edge at the same moment you did and you went over it together.

When she fell asleep, you dressed her as best you could and crept away.

That's how you got into this argument in the first place. A few weeks after seventh year began, she finally got you alone in a room for long enough for her to ask the critical question: "What the _fuck_, Potter? How can you fuck a girl and just leave her in the common room like that?"

This is when you blurt it out. "Because I fucking love you, okay?"

She stares at you. You don't blame her. It doesn't make sense.

She says at much: "That doesn't make any sense, Potter."

"I… fuck."

"Take your time," she says coldly.

"Okay, it's like this," you say, resigning yourself to telling her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "I've been in love with you since basically fourth year, okay?"

She stares at you.

"I've been in love with you since fourth year, and in all that time, I've never thought you might actually go for me. And then you fucked me. So I was terrified, okay? I didn't have the slightest idea what any of it meant and I was terrified that if I stayed there it would all turn out to just be a dream, or some kind of elaborate practical joke. So I ran. I mean, I'm not proud of it. The running, that is. But can you blame me? Really?"

She sighs.

"What was that? Was that a good sigh or a bad sigh?"

"It was a 'Potter, you're a goddamned idiot' sigh," she says, and she kisses you and it's like you finally found something that you lost a long time ago.


End file.
